You might have succeeded in being listed on the holy grail of advertising spots – page 1 of the Google search engine but why then do the orders not come pouring in? It could be one of quite a few reasons and we’ll have a look at a selection of them in this article. The first issue of course could be that your keyword examination has not identified the right searchers. Take for example a Search Engine Optimization Company, they may well have promoted their site based on keywords such as “seo company” and “optimization company”, but if the firms seeking those services do not actually recognise that the service is named so, they will not be typing that into the search engines. This is a very easy trap to fall into and one which you should be warned about before starting a process of optimization. All the people within your company may use those terms and phrases but if the customers who are actually looking for the aid don’t realise, that then you have a problem.
Assuming though that your keywords are correct the next thing to check out is your “snippet”, the small descriptive text that sits behind your page and is ideally picked up by the search engines and displayed on the Search Engine Placement listing results. Is this informative enough? Does it answer the requirements of the person who has just entered the keyword in. A further example, say I needed to buy some of those Chinese lanterns that are very popular these days. I type in “Chinese lantern” into the search engine and I get 10 options listed for me. Some of those may have a very specific snippet, corresponding directly to the very product I’m after. However some may have quite a overall text, providing say, “party accessories” or “celebration banners and decorations”. Clearly I’m going to select the one that directly links into the item I want, the others I may return to if the specific ones don’t really deliver when I get there. So the message here is check your snippet!
Lastly it’s down to the particular content of your pages, and probably back to more traditional marketing concepts rather than the new Online Marketing stuff. Is your website attracting the customer in and pushing them to make that contact with you? Is it making it very straightforward to buy the item, with clear steps and straightforward processes. These are the things that can make the whole process fall down if they are not right, however it is easy to solve, especially if your Search Engine Placement position is decent. If it is, on any alteration made you should immediately be able to monitor the difference particularly if you have a good hit counter and decent sales statistics.
So as you can see just getting onto page one is not inevitably the final answer. If it achieved at the end of a well thought out Online Marketing strategy, and done by a decent Website Optimization Company it can be very successful, if not there are quite a few pitfalls to end up in. If you can afford to buy a package from one of the many optimization companies out there you’ll give yourself the best opportunity but try to work with one who’s fees are calculated on useful results rather than a all-purpose overhaul of your website only.
